A Child From the Thatcher Era

The title: I can't bring myself to call myself one of Thatcher's children. I don't want that sort of association.

.................................................................

On the 3^rd May 1979, we had a bereavement in the family. My pet hamster decided to choose this day to depart from the world. My father immediately suggested that Humphrey had made a sensible choice. Not even a hamster should have to endure life under Margaret Thatcher.

At the time, I had just become a teenager and my views on politics were largely influenced by my parents and the many discussions we had throughout my childhood that ranged from crises in the Middle East to mismanagement of local politics from our Conservative local Councillor neighbour who lived across the street.

We hear about the legacies that people would like to leave to their children, so often in monetary terms. I will never receive a financial legacy from my parents because they never had much money, despite my father being a head teacher, and I hope my mother lives long enough to use all the equity in her existing house to sustain her into old age. However, one of the greatest legacies they have left to me started when I was a toddler – that is the gifts of political thought, empathy and discussion.

Politics was an integral part of our family life. At some point during the War of Attrition between Egypt and Israel at the end of the 60s, I walked into the kitchen to see my mother bent over the radio listening to the most recent atrocities in that part of the world. Deep in thought and restraining herself from crying, she continued to listen to the report of murder, destruction and annihilation – and I silently joined her. To a four year old girl, carefully ensconced thousands of miles away, this world of violence was incomprehensible, and I turned to her and said, “Don’t they realise that they’re killing each other’s brothers and daddy’s?”

And there was my first political statement – full of unreasoned hope and ideology with a strong sense of compassion that has essentially shaped the next forty plus years of my life.

Discord to harmony, error to truth, doubt to faith, despair to hope – I thought my father would explode. He wasn’t an angry person. He rarely became over-heated or aggressive and yet here he was on the 4^th of May 1979, getting out of his seat and waving a finger at the television shouting, “How dare she!” as Thatcher quoted from the Prayer of St. Francis on the steps of 10 Downing Street.

“She’ll destroy this country!” was his next prophetic statement, but even he had no comprehension of the extent of such a comment.

http://www.margaretthatcher.org/archive/stfrancis.asp

So how was Thatcherism for me?

A friend of mine recently said that she was “too young to appreciate her [Thatcher’s] politics at the time”. Although I understood what she meant, I recounted her words with astonishment because this friend is exactly the same age as me, and I was painfully aware of Thatcher’s politics at the time – from the moment she got out of the car in Downing Street in 1979 to the time some eleven years later when she stepped tearfully back into the car to be driven away.

Yet I was one of the lucky ones. My parents were both employed in public sector jobs that were relatively secure. I wasn’t living in a mining area, blighted and scarred by the civil and class wars that became an integral part of my latter teenage years. My brothers didn’t go off to fight in a seemingly pointless war on the other side of the world. I wasn’t a member of an ethnic group who would be victimised and abused as some sort of scapegoat for the state of economic decline in the country and I didn’t have my sexual choices deemed to be unfit for “promotion” under the Clause 28 agreement.

However, my childhood and my early adulthood was still drastically affected by the rise to power of this woman, and with careful and considered thoughtfulness on the part of my parents, I was never allowed to ignore the impact that Thatcher and her policies were having on people in this country and globally.

At this point, it’s also worth mentioning the importance of creativity and the expression of others. On first reflection, Thatcher herself may not have had a direct bearing on my life that influenced the choices I made. On second reflection, her attitude, behaviour and mentality did have a significant and direct bearing on the choices I made in life. Yet others who creatively displayed their heart-felt concerns about what she was doing to the country were the first to impact on my thoughts during Thatcherism.

Alan Bleasdale is one such person. Thirty years on and I am still deeply affected, even wounded, by the portrayal of hopelessness that was shown through the characterisation in “Boys from the Blackstuff”. The despair on the face of Angie Todd, played by Julie Walters, as she saw her husband – brilliantly portrayed by Michael Angelis, disintegrate in front of her is an incredibly strong memory, as is the removal of Yosser Hughes’s children, kicking and screaming, as they were taken away by social services from a man whose sanity had failed him in the depths of overwhelming despondency. Whilst these particular characters were fictional, there were real living and just about breathing people who were far from fictional, attempting to survive as Thatcher and her policies destroyed their lives, their living and their communities. That wasn’t fiction.

Peter Fluck and Roger Law, together with the rest of the Spitting Image masters, managed to satirise with such accuracy that the caricatures almost became the people that they were mocking. From my student accommodation, I remember with absolute clarity the stunned silence that befell the room when the final moments of the 1987 General Election Spitting Image Show occurred – “Tomorrow Belongs to Me!” In that instance, we knew that we had another four years of that woman, and it felt like a real kick in the teeth, no a kick in the heart and the soul. The despondency I’d witnessed a few years before watching a television drama came flooding back. The nightmare was continuing, and I just couldn’t understand why people couldn’t see!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T3OwB6mARI

In 1982, I started my O-Level course and had the ‘pleasure’ of reading Orwell’s “1984” for my English Literature coursework. Simultaneously, I was studying Stalin in history. Both of these extreme dystopias were evident in my life too. Even a pathetically naïve youngster such as me could see some synergy between what I was learning and what was happening in my country – and it chilled me to the core.

I can remember distinctly sitting in a mobile classroom (the 1930s school was falling down and has only just received funding from the disestablished Building Schools for the Future funds to rebuild on the neighbouring field – the one that wasn’t sold off for the quick buck of housing) when there was a scurry of activity coming from the sixth-form block. At the end of the lesson, we went to find out what was happening, and it transpired that one of the British ships beginning with ‘A’ had been attacked in the Falklands. Fatal injuries were reported. Confusion and concern was paramount. Our friend Richard was on board the “Ardent”  or the "Antelope" and his twin brother had just heard about the attack on the news.

The futility of the Falklands conflict (I won’t grace it with the Hawkish term war) had already been a subject of intense scrutiny in our household, and here was that futility personified, living and breathing in the form of a friend called Richard who could easily have been dead in a far-off land. The next few days were excruciating as we awaited news. The outcome was positive. Whilst he had been injured during the explosion, he was alive but many weren’t.

And many were alive but barely living. You couldn’t possibly grow up in the West Midlands without seeing with your own eyes what the unbearable truths of Tory policy were doing to our people. The long and abandoned factories of Darlaston and Wednesbury could just about be seen from certain parts of my school. My uncle, who’d spent a lifetime working in the Rubery Owen – the ironworks, was given a list of people to speak to prior to its ultimate demise; a year short of its centenary of production. It was his job to go and tell them that their services to the company were no longer required. With the job completed, he walked back to the management rooms and was then told to add his name to the top of the list of redundant workers. He still talks of that moment today.

By the time I was 18 years old, the Miner’s Strike was in full flow. For my 18^th birthday, my parents hired a minibus and my family, together with a few friends, travelled to North Wales for a breezy day by the sea. One of these friends was a history teacher at my school by the name of Alun Thomas. It was this man from the mining valleys of South Wales that was driving the minibus when we were stopped by the police as we travelled back to Walsall. One look at this stocky, dark haired and obviously welsh man was enough for us to endure a series of questions to ensure that we hadn’t just driven down from Nottingham or Sheffield – and if we had? Was that suddenly a crime? Secondary striking was – yet another infliction on our civil liberties.

The strike continued and again, the visual memories from that time continue to haunt, particularly this week. I remember travelling to Wales and seeing the lines of army vans with metal grids over their windscreens, transporting the scab coal to the steelworks in the North of the country. Police vans escorted them on their journey as striking miner’s draped their banners over motorway bridges proclaiming their rightful protestations. And as for those television images of civil war between miners and police in Yorkshire, well I wince at the thought. It’s just too painful.

I did my small bit, the only thing I could do. Spending a year on the dole myself as one of the “One in Ten” that UB40 used to sing about, I travelled to that groups home town every Monday to study in the Central Birmingham library. At the bottom of the station slope in New Street, stood a miner with that infamous bright yellow “Coal not Dole” sticker. From my ‘income’ I donated a pound each week into the donation bucket at his feet. I wonder where he is now.

Onto college and I became embroiled in student politics and proudly marched amongst the 120,000+ crowd in November1985 as we took to the streets to protest about Nelson Mandela’s imprisonment and our government’s refusal to participate in economic sanctions against Apartheid. The Commonwealth countries took a vote. The outcome was a resounding plea to commit to sanctions with 49 voting for sanctions and 1 against. Thatcher couldn’t agree with the consensus. When asked about her unbelievable stance with such a unanimous conclusion, what was her response when asked how she felt about being the only person to vote against sanctions? “I feel sorry for the other 49!”

How can a person be so blind to injustice and unfairness when all about them are united? Her truth was her truth and she was going to stick to in spite of any argument or debate put to her. When even some of her political or ideological allies were trying to explain the error of her ways, she vehemently and steadfastly refused to consider for one minute that she might just be wrong. Ultimately, of course, she was proved wrong. Sanctions worked.

She was wrong about other things too. London needed a local government. The power of the Inner London Education Authority and the Greater London Council intimidated her, so she stamped on them, because she could. Like a rabid dog who tastes blood for the first time, her thirst for further political dominance was seemingly unquenchable. Not satisfied with ruining the lives of so many miners, she paired up with her great pal Murdoch to smash the unions once more. Of course, new innovations meant that the press had to change but it was the manner in which it was done that was so devastating and thoughtless, and let’s not forget that there’s a wealth of evidence that the mines could have been financially viable, if you had the will and the nerve to stay in the game and look at the bigger picture.

There are many other memories of Thatcher and what her policies did, including the delights of training a fascist dachshund to bark at the mere mention of her name, but this piece of writing is too long already. We could all write books of our personal recollections and why we feel so passionately about the harm this woman did, and they are all relevant and pertinent even if only to ourselves. Thatcher wounded and killed people through her policies. Let’s not shy away from this fact. People died. They lost their lives because of her policies. As I said, I was one of the lucky ones. But I lost something too.

I lost my political party.

I appreciate this is just my personal opinion and one that would be staunchly debated amongst my socialist friends and family but with the Jack mentality and the dismissal of society and communities (only individuals and families) she took away the normality of togetherness, of empathy and of equality. No wonder she wasn’t fond of the French with their national slogan of “Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite”.

She pushed party politics to a middle ground that is a void of nothingness with no reason or conviction. That’s not to say her own politics was embedded in “middle”-ness. Far from it! But overcoming the philosophy of Thatcherism meant that an utter dilution of justice and fairness ensued, under the premise that anything was better than a continued diet of Thatcherism.  Because of this, I have felt disenfranchised for most of my adult life.  It will take further writing to explain this in detail but her statement that one of her greatest achievements in life was the emergence of New Labour is not funny. Let’s remember, she had no sense of humour by her own admission.

As Glenda Jackson so brilliantly said, “everything I had been taught to regard as a vice - and I still regard them as vices - under Thatcherism was in fact a virtue: greed, selfishness, no care for the weaker, sharp elbows, sharp knees. They were the way forward.”

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/margaret-thatcher-dead-watch-glenda-1822905

And it’s this that not even my insightful father could see, as he shouted at the television about how this woman was going to destroy the country, which makes me so despondent. Yes, she was radical. Yes, she shaped society – and she never said it didn’t exist, she just didn’t believe in it.

And now for a final comment.

At 10.50 on Monday 8^th April 2013, I was sitting in my brother’s house doing some work when I saw him charging through the garden with his fist victoriously raised in the air. I rushed out to him and all he had to say was “She’s dead!”

Instantaneously, I knew who he was talking about and exploded into a fit of multiple “Yes’s” as my bemused children looked on. Expletives followed, as did a question of confirmation as to whether it was true because the news still hadn’t materialised on the television. I concluded with the comment that Madiba had outlived her – which was one of my greatest hopes and something that had caused me unnecessary concern over the Easter weekend as Mandela resided in hospital.

For a few hours, with tweet and television viewing, my elation continued, and I’m not massively proud of this feeling. However, by the end of the evening, I was calmer and a little sadder. Throughout the day, I’d been remembering all the reasons why I disagreed so vehemently with Thatcher and why I despised her policies, and a touch of hopelessness crept in. Laurie Penny, writer for the New Statesman and the Guardian, had written “Thatcher has died. Her legacy lives on. Sympathies to her family, and to the families of all who suffered because of her leadership.”

My legacy from my parents was my political persuasions that were and still are steeped in a sense of justice and a belief in humankind. The best way to secure Thatcher’s legacy is to do nothing and to accept what Glenda Jackson said about vice and virtue as merely being the way of the world. It isn’t. If all those who feel passionately enough about this unite, then we collectively ensure that the legacy of Thatcher dies with her.

United we stand, together we will not fall.

Politicians Calling

Even Michael Heseltine concedes that politicians are not what they used to be. Even I concede that I would rather have the Michael Heseltine’s of this world in the House of Commons than some of the nobody’s that we currently have to endure.
I agreed with almost nothing that the man ever said as he took his place on the green benches, whichever side of the house he was sitting. I enjoyed his banter and criticism of the Thatcher woman but was despondent when he did not always go for the jugular.
Although I have no commonality with his vision, I respect the fact that he holds strong on his fundamentalism and his beliefs. Whilst his idealism is a thousand miles apart from my own, I acknowledge that he has the right to believe and understand that he has a vocation in his political life.

Although he has long since departed from the Commons, he is still committed to doing something in the world. Admittedly, his various ventures are done for profit as well as altruism but one has to respect the fact that he does something, for example, his commitment to the Children and Young People Now magazine that gathers good practice and ideas on how to further guide and support the needs of our next generation.
I suspect that Heseltine doesn’t believe in all the initiatives that are commented on in this magazine but he funds the publication nonetheless, or at least he did.

Heseltine was on the television this week, commenting on the death of Michael Foot. He was sensible enough to admit that there was no similarity of thought between himself and the old man of Labour. He even went as far as to say that Foot was wrong but he respected him for what he was; a passionate English radical.

That is the headline that was used about Michael Foot yesterday, “Ninety-six years in the life of a passionate English radical” – a good headline in my opinion.

It may be a step too far but there is the possibility that Michael Foot really was quite close to being a self-actualised human being. (Socialists have a head start!!)
Obviously, I cannot make such a sweeping statement because I did not know him. I did not live with him and my recollections of his fabulous speeches are deeply entrenched in a memory bank of decades ago. However, the point is that he was not just a career politician. Admittedly, he reached the heights of Leader of the Party but that was not done purely out of self-ambition. He had an absolute passion to make a difference to the masses. This was not a hypothetical hopefulness. It was a real vision and he ardently wanted to see real change and real equality taking shape in this visionless, needy society.

He had other passions too.

He loved writing. He was an arduous reader and not just of politically related tomes. He was an avid football fan; not a follower of the great and successful teams but a smaller, some might say insignificant team from the lower levels of the league, who have probably never played in a cup final at Wembley and probably never will. (Apologies Pilgrim fans – my research has not led me to finding out whether you played on the hallowed ground in your 1980s FA cup semi final). He adored his beloved hometown and enjoyed all that the beautiful county of Devon had to offer.

It is sad that the one phrase that is always dashed out when talking about Michael Foot is the one attributed to Gerald Kaufman who stated that the 1983 manifesto was “the longest suicide note in history”. But it would be quite interesting to return to that now and read how much of the socialist elements within are relevant and needed in our society today. Maybe the “longest suicide note” will find its way into the world eventually.

For Foot was passionate. He believed. He believed in society and a shared responsibility. He believed in self-development and the need to enjoy special aspects of our lives. He believed in the rights of the individual and the importance of the self. He understood the ability to give his thoughts voice. He expressed his passion frequently, sometimes grumpily such was his determination and loathing of certain things that he saw and felt.
That passion is so vital and I wish to goodness there were more politicians on either side of the political spectrum who felt that passion and could convey it to the electorate.

Before I move on to other politicians, I would like to remember my one and only meeting with Michael Foot.

As a child, I was fortunate enough to spend many holidays in London. I loathe and detest much of what London is about but I also love it. It is my adopted home and I do think the connection with the place stems from these frequent childhood visits when we traipsed all over the city. The anecdotes and humour of many of our trips have gone into family folklore – like my mother’s inability to catch a bus in the right direction, or my father’s fury at my cousin’s inability to direct him in traffic. (There was a time when we went over Tower Bridge five times because B couldn’t find the route to direct my Dad to).
One such trip, we did the tour around the streets of Westminster. We stood on the steps of Number 10, something my children are not allowed to do. We walked up and down Whitehall, looking on in awe that our society was being shaped by the grey-coats and hats in these magnificent buildings and we walked towards the Houses of Parliament.

It was a warm February day. It must have been during half term and yet the place was open for business. Did they always have half term breaks?
We were just walking past the gates when this elderly gentleman got off the bus directly next to the building.
He flung himself onto the pavement, walking stick in one hand, newspaper in the other and marched towards his destination.
Nobody else in the family had noticed. They were busy staring up at the clock tower but I watched in amazement at this grey haired man; firstly because I recognized him as a significant person and one of us, but also because he was walking through this hallowed land in his slippers!
I turned to my cousin, siblings and mother to show them this ‘famous man’ from the television, commenting on his brown tartan footwear.

It was probably the first famous person I had ever seen. Years I had been coming down to London, assuming that because everyone lived there, I would bump into these famous folk on every street corner, and here I was standing next to the future leader of the party.
It is possibly why I have always held him dear to my heart, and why, in a stupid and unimportant way, another piece of my childhood died this week.

Yet this is not insubstantial.
It is this sort of encounter that keeps one in touch with these unattainable characters that shape our laws and create the way our society develops. They are actually real people and sometimes we tend to forget that.
Or more importantly, sometimes they forget that too.
I’m not sure you would see frontbenchers these days arriving to work on a red double decker. Security risks would not allow it. I wonder if Michael Foot would flout this and travel his own way nonetheless.

Another visit to London, some years later, also springs to mind. I was walking once more down the streets of Whitehall. It was a school visit and it must have been about 1982. We were on a school outing to the Imperial War Museum and for some reason we had been dropped off near Parliament.
I wandered up the street towards Downing Street, commenting that I sincerely hoped I did not bump into the Prime Minister because I would not be civil to her, and in those days, I was still way too conservative with a small C, and wouldn’t have wanted to upset or annoy my teachers. Goody two shoes me!

One of my teachers was walking directly next to me as we looked at all the departments up and down the street. He asked me questions, such as who is the Home Secretary and what did I think was happening in this department today. I think I surprised him with my knowledge, not just of the general knowledge political facts but my thoughts on who was around and what they were doing.

As we walked past the Cabinet office, who should appear but the Tarzan man himself. Flopping his blond hair around just like his Spitting Image puppet indicated he would, Heseltine stepped onto the street and strutted along.
I can’t say I was as awestruck as when I saw Foot but I did still get a little immature buzz at seeing a famous person and wanting to rush over to him to discuss the Falklands conflict.

The teacher I was with watched in amusement at my excitement which was not just about seeing a member of the cabinet but the whole passion of being here in the heart of politics. I remember quite distinctly him turning to me and pleading with me to take the A-level course in Government and Politics that he had just introduced to the sixth form menu. He wanted the vitality that I had to offer, apparently.
I declined sadly. I wanted to do sociology and my parents weren’t going to let me do two so called soft options. It was always going to be History, English and one other.

Still, I maintained a healthy interest throughout my sixth form and then on into my college days and career. Once more, this must stem from such visits and reiterates the importance of taking children and young people out of their classrooms, away from their text books and out so that they can feel and experience the reality of the political world. We still do not do this enough.

I’ve never really understood people who call themselves apolitical.
I appreciate that I have been more fortunate than most in that my family have always encouraged and created an environment where we constantly talked about real events, visions and ideology. I was also fortunate that I had teachers like my Whitehall companion who, despite me ignoring his pleas to join his group of merry politician makers, still met with me around school, inviting me to discuss the particular political agenda of the day.

By the strangest of coincidences, I have just been interrupted by a friend to remind me that Gordon Brown is talking to the Chilcot inquiry. He mentioned that there are only 284 people on line, listening live to our Prime Minister talking about his involvement in a war that has ostracised so many of the party faithful, that has created a chasm that is unable to be mended for some who feel disenfranchised by this particular action of our government. Where is everyone? They are not all at work.

I really do not know how you could be anything other than fascinated in politics. It isn’t as if it is just one subject. Politics is life; it is education, it is relationships, it is consideration, it is greed. Politics considers prejudice and faith. It tackles inequality and indoctrination. It reiterates inequality and indoctrination.
It is about economics and judgment. It is about war and peace. And it is a whole lot more besides.

We are entering a period of Purdah where local and national authorities are tongue-tied six weeks before an election. Local government officers and politicians are not allowed to do anything that could in any way shape or influence the way people might vote. A new school cannot be created in case it is this act that ensures a liberal vote over a conservative one. National bodies have to stop the Caxton press on documents that could actually help people just in case the receipt of such writing could be seen as the deciding factor for the floating voter.
Yet they are allowed to spread their lies, half-truths and inaccuracies through manifestos and party political broadcasts. How bizarre is that?

Purdah is a weird state but it does show how everything links back to politics and if people think that politics does not enter their lives, they are sadly very wrong indeed.
Politics is life.

And this brings me back to the purpose of my writing today.
We are approaching a general election where the turnout is going to be tragically low. For those of us who are deeply interested, this is an exciting time. We may have the first hung parliament for nearly forty years. The Conservatives should be sweeping the board, yet their decline in the polls show the opposite. This government is loathed by so many of all different political persuasions and yet people will still vote for Labour out of perpetual hope, conviction, history or even apathy to consider other voices.
The electoral system does not enable us to vote in the way that we would like. The bias is established and seems unlikely to be overturned in the near future.

Why are people not interested?

We’ve had the fiasco of MPs expenses and we have seen a tirade of the hopeless and the helpless who vehemently defend their greed with incongruous justification.

And as I write, I am listening to a man who may be passionate about his politics but has lost the vision and has been clouded in far too many decisions that it is unlikely that he is going to maintain his position at Number 10.

I return to Mr. Foot and Heseltine. I remember the cabinet scene from Spitting Image when Thatcher was ordering some food.
Waitress: Would you like to order, Sir?
Thatcher: Steak please
Waitress: How would you like it?
Thatcher: Raw
Waitress: And what about the vegetables?
Thatcher: Oh? They’ll have the same as me…..

Only they weren’t vegetables, were they? They were clever, powerful personalities who just happened to stand for moreorless everything that I despised and disagreed with.
Tebbit and his bike, Cecil and his lover, Lawson and his pot belly, Clark and his charisma.
They all had something. They were all people of substance, however much you disliked their policies.
They were all quite passionate and full of character, otherwise Spitting Image couldn’t have had such fun with them.
On the other side, there were truly great people. I could and did sit and watch Denis Skinner sitting in his hotseat in parliament, subtly waiting for his time to pounce down the necks of both the opposition and his own party. There was the truly monumentous Benn, who on opening his mouth stopped me in my tracks in the same way that Botham used to empty bars as he waved his bat towards the crease.
Kinnock, Smith, even Hattersley made me think, made me consider.
Even the runaways of the David’s and the Shirley’s were worth listening too.

Is it just a childhood memory that makes these people seem so more viable and real than the current collection of bods?

It is ironic really that people are concerned that politics and voting is turning into a personality test.
The contest is between Brown and Cameron with a little bit of Clegg thrown in for good measure, yet these ‘personalities’ are miniscule compared to the wealth on offer a decade or so ago.

Labour will probably lose the next election. There will then be the discussion on who is emerging to lead the party into the recovery that it so desperately needs. But who is there out there?
As long as I can remember, there has always been a clear candidate for succession, often more than one but now, I fear for the future because I cannot see that significant person emerging.

There is going to be a huge amount of new politicians whoever wins. The MP from my youth is standing down after 36 years in parliament; another reminder that my childhood has long since gone.
My only hope is that they show the type of passion and understanding that Bruce George has done for his constituents.
My only hope is that some personable, understanding, compassionate, thoughtful, intelligent people emerge to take politics into the 21st century in a way that is meaningful and gives energy, equity and vitality back to governance.

Politics is life. Life is people. People, good people, people of stature and significance are needed.

The next few weeks are going to be interesting.